EU's lack of features in customer service compared to US?

[Loras]

*WARNING* A rant topic incoming

Probably exaggerating a bit, just in an /annoyed mood lately for various reasons, but was just thinking - are Blizzard treating the customers from the EU region as 3rd world people compared to the ones from the US? The customer serice in every single game is just horrible for us.

1. WoW patching - US servers getting it all 1 day ahead (for some it's actually a downside as any potential problems would occur for the US gamers and be fixed for the next day for the EU ones)

2. WoW forums - US forums blue posts and general staff presence is INCREDIBLY higher. So many more blue posts, so many more responses, ideas, suggestions, feedback, etc. Which wouldn't have been so bad, if we didn't reach...

...3. - the division of servers! It's not exactly a point for US > EU, but that server division is just annoying. I
can understand it about the game, but why forums? I can live with US forums receiving much more attention, but that attention brings in more topics, and if I agree or disagree, I can't even reply to that cause I need an US account! That's just bullsh*t if you ask me - why not combine the forums at least... It already works in games like RIFT - not only forums, but even servers you have free access to, be it US or EU.

4. D3 beta. Same story. US people get blue posts, information, dates, official waves of beta CD keys. EU gets nothing. Just now , yesterday or so, some people from EU started receiving keys. And still without any hint of information from Blizzard "hey guys, sorry for the inconvenience, you are receivng keys later, but hope you enjoy the beta!"

5. PTR. PTR is up, download finished asap, logging in - 40+ 85 characters. Checking EU character copy page - balls. Half a day later - balls. Not available. Grey buttons, unrealistic waiting time queues. Not working. Ditto.

It's hard for you guys from US to comment on that, I guess, since you might not even know about those issues, so probably EU responses are more expected. What do you think? Is it fair, is it justified? After all, I pay no less than an American, so don't see a reason to be mistreated like that.

P.S. Hope the thread doesn't derail into racist debates hehe

[Nikachelle]

To be honest... none of this applies to me. The one thing I LOVE is that the US servers get all the really shitty patch days the day before us, and by the time EU servers get it - it's resolved a LOT more quickly just because they know what went round the first time.

I also found lag significantly worse on US servers. (Not that you brought that up.)

But I've never cared about blue posts, feedback on the forums, or even anything really to do with the official forums, other than my own server's threads/forums.

I don't play on PTRs and I don't play betas.

So perhaps I'm not really your target audience for this type of thread...

[Winkle]

As an EU player my views generally align with Nikachelle's.

1)Reset earlier in US is really only a negative for World 1st progress. And even that doesn't seem to prevent EU from trouncing US. For everyone else its nice to have someone effectively test every patch for a day.

2/3) The forum division does seem slightly arbitrary, but honestly doesn't bother me.

4) D3 Beta, they develop the game in the US, so i imagine there's slightly less/any regionalisation work that needs to be done when releasing a beta in the country it was developed in. Anyway Beta is primarily for testing, just because everyone treats it as a glorified 1st access/demo isn't Blizzards concern.

5) Character copy not working on PTR seems the strangest, not sure why'd there'd be a difference between EU and US here, just sounds like the EU is slacking.

In general the differences are so minor as to be inconsequential to 99%+ of all EU players.

[Sabindeus]

*WARNING* A rant topic incoming

Probably exaggerating a bit, just in an /annoyed mood lately for various reasons, but was just thinking - are Blizzard treating the customers from the EU region as 3rd world people compared to the ones from the US? The customer serice in every single game is just horrible for us.

1. WoW patching - US servers getting it all 1 day ahead (for some it's actually a downside as any potential problems would occur for the US gamers and be fixed for the next day for the EU ones)

2. WoW forums - US forums blue posts and general staff presence is INCREDIBLY higher. So many more blue posts, so many more responses, ideas, suggestions, feedback, etc. Which wouldn't have been so bad, if we didn't reach...

...3. - the division of servers! It's not exactly a point for US > EU, but that server division is just annoying. I
can understand it about the game, but why forums? I can live with US forums receiving much more attention, but that attention brings in more topics, and if I agree or disagree, I can't even reply to that cause I need an US account! That's just bullsh*t if you ask me - why not combine the forums at least... It already works in games like RIFT - not only forums, but even servers you have free access to, be it US or EU.

4. D3 beta. Same story. US people get blue posts, information, dates, official waves of beta CD keys. EU gets nothing. Just now , yesterday or so, some people from EU started receiving keys. And still without any hint of information from Blizzard "hey guys, sorry for the inconvenience, you are receivng keys later, but hope you enjoy the beta!"

5. PTR. PTR is up, download finished asap, logging in - 40+ 85 characters. Checking EU character copy page - balls. Half a day later - balls. Not available. Grey buttons, unrealistic waiting time queues. Not working. Ditto.

It's hard for you guys from US to comment on that, I guess, since you might not even know about those issues, so probably EU responses are more expected. What do you think? Is it fair, is it justified? After all, I pay no less than an American, so don't see a reason to be mistreated like that.

P.S. Hope the thread doesn't derail into racist debates hehe

Pretend for a moment that America does not exist. For that matter, pretend Europe is the only place in the entire world with WoW. Suddenly your issue list is whittled down to "PTR copy page takes a while to work properly after they put up the servers" and that is something we've all dealt with since the dawn of time, even in the US (especially in the US).

Basically it's not that you're getting poor customer service, it's that you're expecting things before you get them, and then complaining about it.

[Loras]

Yeah, sausages nowadays are made of soy but some have them from meat. Imagine that meat didn't exist and you're a happy panda, having a nice tasty sausage. Sorry but that's hardly an argument I can accept. I didn't say "I can't live without those features, I'm gonna slit my wrists". I just can see the differences in the forementioned areas. Can I pretend it doesn't exist and say "eh, it's all fine, there's no difference, who cares"?

[Sabindeus]

Yeah, sausages nowadays are made of soy but some have them from meat. Imagine that meat didn't exist and you're a happy panda, having a nice tasty sausage. Sorry but that's hardly an argument I can accept. I didn't say "I can't live without those features, I'm gonna slit my wrists". I just can see the differences in the forementioned areas. Can I pretend it doesn't exist and say "eh, it's all fine, there's no difference, who cares"?

No, but at least be truthful with your complaints. You're not complaining about customer service here. You're complaining about the grass being greener on the other side.

[Nikachelle]

You're not complaining about customer service here. You're complaining about the grass being greener on the other side.

Which IS a valid complaint when you feel you're not being treated the same and yet you pay (roughly) the same for each other products, but delivery is slower (to summarize).

[Loras]

Ok, maybe "customer service" is not the best wording for it (or maybe it is), but I'm sure you get my point...

Do you like going to a nice restaurant and always being served last? You get the same quality food, same amount, same price, but the waiter always serves all the other tables first before coming to yours.

[Treck]

1. WoW patching - US servers getting it all 1 day ahead (for some it's actually a downside as any potential problems would occur for the US gamers and be fixed for the next day for the EU ones)

I really dont see this beeing such an issue.
Honestly, US could use all the time they can get, and they still dont have a chance ^^
Altho, they did release cataclysm the same hour worldwide, i dont see why they cant do the same when a new tier is introduced.
No top10 guild is going to have a problem starting in the middle of the night with progress anyway.
And i dont see how it affects the rest in a negative way.

2. WoW forums - US forums blue posts and general staff presence is INCREDIBLY higher.

4. D3 beta. Same story. US people get blue posts, information, dates, official waves of beta CD keys. EU gets nothing.

I dont see this beeing much of a problem, but it IS very annoying.
US forums are a lot more populated, but i think this could have to do with EU players not having english as their first language, this might not seem like much of a thing, but a lot of people might think twice before deciding to make a post.

5. PTR. PTR is up, download finished asap, logging in - 40+ 85 characters. Checking EU character copy page - balls. Half a day later - balls. Not available. Grey buttons, unrealistic waiting time queues. Not working. Ditto.

This is annoying, but from a pure raid pov, you will have plenty of time and oportunities to copy/create premade before the raiding stuff becomes available.

It's hard for you guys from US to comment on that, I guess, since you might not even know about those issues, so probably EU responses are more expected. What do you think? Is it fair, is it justified? After all, I pay no less than an American, so don't see a reason to be mistreated like that.

I DO think the forums should prolly be merged between EU and US.
I dont see why there is complete differance between a US client and an american.
You can transfer from french to european servers just fine iirc, so why not merge it so you can go between US and EU aswell.
And people will have the option to choose.
Most EU people will still want a EU server to reduce lag, same with US people, but i dont see why it has to be like 2 different games.

[fuzzygeek]

"Scapegoat" implies someone is being blamed unfairly. I don't think that's the word you're looking for. Perhaps "second class citizen" is more along the lines. Or, "red headed stepchild."

Is it a valid complaint? Sure. Are there valid reasons these things happen? I would also argue that is probably the case: Blizzard is an American company, and most of their manpower is concentrated in the States. Doing business internationally adds all kinds of layers of complexity, and these layers add time.

I'd be curious to see what the playerbase distribution is, region by region.

As far as PTR: is it *required* that they do beta testing on EU or CN servers? I'd argue no. You're not paying for access to beta testing. As long as actual product is released in a reasonably identical time frame -- I would argue one day is certainly reasonable. And I think Bliz tries to address that -- didn't Cata go active at the same instant world-wide?

[Nikachelle]

I DO think the forums should prolly be merged between EU and US.
I dont see why there is complete differance between a US client and an american.
You can transfer from french to european servers just fine iirc, so why not merge it so you can go between US and EU aswell.

The difference between the US and EU clients is dues to laws and policies governing each individual client. To give an example... if you play in North America and are using an EU client, you are expected to abide by the regulations and restrcitions of the US client (no, I'm not kidding). This was spelled out for me when I could not get a RAF account for Invis EU side because I was playing from North America. Their policy dictated that only certain European countries were eligible for a RAF account through the EU client (to give and receive) and since we were neither of those, we were unable to utilize that feature. Another example would be during the Brewfest event a few years back where the "get drunk and see pink elephants" quest was banned from EU servers due to policies.

There was also a bunch of other stuff I was told involving the two clients and the legislations around them (of which I can't remember too clearly right now), but suffice to say, the games and clients are not the same and they cannot be merged. Which is why we also can't transfer from EU to US and vice versa.

[Worldie]

Just for teh funnye, you can copy EU premades from US site and it works very well.

[Sabindeus]

You're not complaining about customer service here. You're complaining about the grass being greener on the other side.

Which IS a valid complaint when you feel you're not being treated the same and yet you pay (roughly) the same for each other products, but delivery is slower (to summarize).

I mean it's certainly a complaint. The validity of it is based on whether or not you think getting a patch or whatnot constitutes "delivery" so to speak. And more specifically, whether or not you consider WoW in Europe to be the exact same product as WoW in the US, and then apply the argument of every customer deserving the same treatment. I could make a pretty convincing argument as to why this is NOT the case.

In fact while I was responding Nika wrote up some good examples of facts I would use in such an argument, so read her post.

[Treck]

The difference between the US and EU clients is dues to laws and policies governing each individual client.

Yeh yeh, what i meant was from a pure player standpoint.
I know why they cant merge them just like that, but it feels it would make more sense if it was united more as one game.
Currently it sometimes feels like 2 different som ways (if not more counting TW region, and not to mention chinese version, that just got cataclysm or smth?).

But Blizzard is a game from the US, created there, and most of its development is there, i think we should be happy we can play it on EU servers.

[PsiVen]

I have always hated region locking (US/EU separation) but it's pretty clear why EU is "second-class" -- Blizzard is in the US. Patches come out here first because otherwise they would come out there first; nobody wants maintenance windows in the middle of prime time, and we're in very different timezones.

With more than enough willing testers in the US, PTRs and Betas don't need to exist in any other region. There aren't devs anywhere else, and there's no need to hire extra people abroad to support unnecessary services. From a business standpoint the only reason to do it is community goodwill, so they aren't as well maintained. Character copying services in particular are notoriously finicky, even in the US -- they just get fixed quicker here because the devs need to prioritize it.